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Integration to Balance Information Inequities

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Live end-to-end supply chain visibility. No other alternate. Hypothetically speaking if the ecosystem was considered as one integrated enterprise, a substantial cost saving potential will appear blatantly.

With over 80% of hospitals below 30 beds; and over 95% being family owned (mostly physician/ surgeon owned); the clinical bandwidth is always stretched between patient-care, hospital administration and business management. The effective physician time deployed by the already poor per capita doctor ratio is further reduced due to the weak orientation to deploy strong management professionals, robust business processes and advanced business automation. Needless to say, this makes adhocism the way of doing business. The magnitude of chaos is further magnified by the external interfaces and market dynamics - no less unstructured either as the supplier side is equally fragmented and struggling to maximize market coverage and to optimize the distribution footprint. With majority of the suppliers being small scale enterprises, they find it difficult to get across to fragmented customer base dispersed across the 200+ healthcare destinations.

Hypothetically speaking if the ecosystem was considered as one integrated enterprise, a substantial cost saving potential will appear blatantly. From the supplier to providers to patients, the value chain is loaded with unproductive overheads stemming from inefficient deployment of resources and capital, recurring non-value add activities, heavy duplication of work, avoidable reconciliations, manual and unstructured interfaces, disjointed and incoherent exchange of business information and many more gaps. Unfortunately, all these convert into overheads that are added to the overall cost of doing business - first in the landed cost of products (devices, drugs etc.) sold/ sourced from point of manufacture/ import through the multi-layered distribution channel and manual supply chain to reach the hospital; add to this the cost of procurement; and then compound it further by the cost loadings/ leakages as it finally gets billed as the cost of treatment to the patient.

The nucleus of the challenge lies in information inequities stemming from incomplete, invisible, incoherent, inconsistent, inconvenient and inefficient access to and exchange of information. Strategic disruption is needed to address the information inequities by weaving a reliable framework for an ecosystem information backbone that bridges the broken and missing links. Collective action and collective scale can then produce further business-efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Healthcare is highly information intensive and highly manpower intensive. A parallel combination and convergence of both information and professionals in one place is needed to facilitate effective collaboration and exchange; to produce outcomes for Making Indian Healthcare AAA+ [Accessible | Affordable | Adequate]. We at INHX, Indian Healthcare Exchange, are focusing on effective sourcing and effective selling as a starting point to make a measurable impact alongside a viable venture. This then branches out in various directions and dimensions of information collaboration.

INHX is a digital integration platform that enables wider market access, easy information sharing and advanced automation of B2B trade across the Indian healthcare ecosystem. Our primary goal is to multiply business efficiency to cut costs, save time, reduce complexities and prevent errors. Significant business efficiencies accrue when trading parties linkup, interface and transact on one business exchange.

Some areas of INHX Impact:

  1. Visibility and access for effective sourcing and effective selling: Know your options to make an informed choice
  2. Reduce overheads to optimize the cost of doing business
  3. Multiply business efficiency for better time productivity, strong business controls and supply chain automation
  4. Enhance patient safety: Track-n-trace devices from source to consumption
  5. Product authentication for counterfeit protection
  6. Contract assurance to minimize exceptions
  7. Clarity thru information collaboration: Point-of-need and time-of-need information
  8. Empowered voice for responsible and responsive business dealings
  9. Cost savings from group deals
  10. Faster adoption and better viability of new/ advanced medical technologies

One information backbone can create a virtual effect of integrating the healthcare ecosystem. The network effect will promote transparency and modernization in addition to the leverages from collective scale; and make the life of surgeons more productive as clinicians for them to spend more time on and further focus on improving patient-care.

Last edited: June 30, 2014